


Glitter

by Willa Shakespeare (AnonEhouse)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Post Gauda Prime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 15:57:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonEhouse/pseuds/Willa%20Shakespeare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tarrant's hurt and tired and really thinks that lying down and never getting up again isn't the worst way to go. Avon disagrees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glitter

(If you are reading this on any PAY site this is a STOLEN WORK, the author has NOT Given Permission for it to be here. If you're paying to read it, you're being cheated too because you can read it on Archiveofourown for FREE.)

Too bright, Tarrant thought as he followed in Avon's footprints. Too bright, and too cold. He paused to catch his breath- only for a moment. Just a few seconds rest in this endless roundabout ride. He was so tired. He was tired of following a man who hardly ever spoke, tired of the aches and pains that never eased, and he was tired to tears of trudging through Gauda Prime's wilderness. _I used to think snow was beautiful._ Probably it would still be beautiful to someone else; someone who had friendly companionship around a hearthfire and a warm bed at the end of the day. All he had was Avon, who registered minus zero on anyone's scale of warmth. Tarrant stared numbly ahead at Avon's retreating back, muddy gray against the bright flashy glitter of a pristine snowbank. There were no more Alpha leader outfits for either of them, rather they both wore scrounged castoffs, stolen bits and pieces, and whatever the natives would trade for animal pelts. They lived like animals themselves, so it was no wonder Avon was able to think like the wild felines and canines he hunted. 

He and Avon had lost everything except their lives, and at the moment, Tarrant was feeling his grip on mortality weakening. The pain had been a steady companion for so long that it no longer meant anything to him, but the lightheadedness and nausea was something new. The glare was making it worse. He should have kept his head down. Avon hadn't noticed his absence yet, being far too concerned with breaking a path through the waist-deep snowdrifts while simultaneously watching out for sign of marketable animals and any indications of Federation troopers. Avon seemed to have adapted well to being both the hunted and hunter. Perhaps everything was simpler for Avon now. A paranoid must feel comfortable in a world where everyone is your enemy. He wondered how Avon viewed him. Avon had saved him and stayed by him even after it became obvious Tarrant was a handicap, but wouldn't talk about the others, or say how the two of them had escaped. For that matter, Tarrant sometimes thought they hadn't escaped, weren't still alive. This could very well be Hell. He hadn't mentioned it to Avon, for fear the man would agree, destroying Tarrant's hope of an ending. 

He was cold, wet to the waist, and too worn out to shiver. He hadn't eaten all day and wasn't looking forward to trying again. He wasn't looking forward to anything. Abruptly his legs folded and he found himself lying in the snow. Funny thing, it didn't feel any colder. He curled up awkwardly, putting his mittened hands under his cheek. The snow was piled high all around him. There wasn't any wind down here in the trench Avon had made and as long as Tarrant didn't move, the nausea wasn't too bad. Hypothermia was supposed to be one of the easier deaths. At the moment it seemed a good idea. Avon could go on fighting alone; he wasn't like Tarrant. Avon didn't need anyone.

_Tarrant?_

Tarrant opened his eyes. Avon had come back, and was sitting in the snow, holding Tarrant's head on his lap. Through the dirt and the scruffy beard it was hard to tell, but Avon looked concerned. "Go on," Tarrant said. "I'll follow you later."

"No. You won't. How bad is it?" Avon unlaced Tarrant's outer garments, despite weak protests. Avon's face went bleak when he gazed at Tarrant's side. "Why didn't you say something?" Avon asked, while he opened their medical pack.

"It didn't matter. There's nothing you can do about it." He winced as Avon smeared ointment over the puffed and blackened flesh. "Aah! Avon, stop it!" Tarrant grabbed Avon's wrist. "It's no use."

Avon turned still then, his eyes unfocused, staring past Tarrant. "No. I can see that."

"Just go on. I don't mind. Really. It's not your fault."

"Whose is it, then?" Avon asked harshly. Now he was glaring at Tarrant. Tarrant hadn't much strength left for emotion, but he was mildly pleased to see Avon's anger. Anger could keep a man warm, keep him moving. Maybe Avon would survive and knowing Avon, he'd take revenge for all of them.

"I don't know- just, not yours. Tell me, Avon. The others?"

Avon looked aside, as if inspecting the pine trees. "I don't know," he said, finally. "When I. When I was aware again, you and I were alone, in a cell. I'm... not quite sure how I got us out." His eyes went back to meet Tarrant's. "I was not too coherent. A result of the stun, no doubt."

"Yes," Tarrant agreed. He didn't want to think about the other stresses and shocks they'd both had. He still wasn't sure whether Avon had murdered Blake, or Blake had betrayed Avon, or if both of them had been outmaneuvered by the Federation. Privately, he felt it was Fate- that some unseen force was angry that they were still fighting despite the ridiculous odds and simply settled the matter by sweeping them off the game board. "Why did you take me with you?" He had a very dim recollection of Avon gasping and staggering while dragging him down a long, hard corridor. 

"Perhaps I thought I might need a pilot," Avon muttered, while fastening up Tarrant's tunic. "You're cold," he commented, in a very un-Avon statement of the obvious.

"No, I'm not." Tarrant was quite comfortable, actually. The longer he lay on the snow, the less his side hurt. He really didn't care if that was because of nerve damage or because the flesh was frozen solid. He didn't plan on using this body much longer. "Pity the Federation clamped down on the port. What's Orac got to say?"

Avon shook his head. "Nothing good, I'm afraid." Avon's eyes were no longer distant. Tarrant almost fancied he saw a twinge of regret in them. "The only ships on Gauda Prime are Federation ships- very well guarded Federation ships." He pulled a communicator out of an inner pocket. "Orac."

There was no reply.

"Orac!" Avon spoke harshly. "This is an emergency! Reply at once."

_Oh, very well. What is it, now?_

Tarrant was beginning to doze. Vaguely he heard Avon arguing with Orac.

***

It was warm. _Ah, I must be dead,_ Tarrant thought with satisfaction. _That was easy._ He opened his eyes, and was disappointed to see dirty, trodden-down snow all around him, and Avon's mouse-brown jacket tossed over him. He wrinkled his nose. That jacket had been one of Avon's less successful attempts at tanning. No one would trade them anything for the wolf pelts, so Avon had made a jacket from them. It was warm, and presumably Avon no longer smelled it, but Tarrant could. He pushed it off.

"No." Avon stood over Tarrant, his eyes as cold and calculating as ever. "Keep that on."

Tarrant shook his head and continued pushing the fur away. Avon frowned, and knelt by the medical bag, coming up with a pre-loaded syringe. "Keep still."

"No." Tarrant tried to avoid the needle, but Avon simply pushed him flat and held him down with one hand while injecting him. "Stupid, Avon. You might need..." Abruptly, Tarrant's tongue grew thick. "Wha wuzzit?"

"Just something to keep you quiet." Avon got up, brushed the snow off his knees, and returned to an apparently interrupted task. He picked up a pile of branches and added them to a carefully arranged pyramid of sticks.

Tarrant stared stupidly at the wood. " 'von, you can't..." he said, weakly, as Avon used the disassembled igniter from one of their weapons to start a blaze. "Th' heat will ..." Tarrant went silent as Avon lifted his shaggy head, giving him a feral stare.

"Yes. It will draw the bounty hunters and the Federation. I can't take care of you, Tarrant." 

Avon was abandoning him. He shouldn't have been surprised. It was the logical thing for Avon the survivor to do. So why did it hurt so much? "Gun. Lea' me a gun." His hands weren't quite numb. Tarrant scrabbled after his laser rifle, but Avon pulled it away.

"No. I may need them both," Avon replied. He packed up the supplies, transferring a few items from Tarrant's backpack to his own. 

"One shot. 'von, you owe me tha'!" It was getting even harder to talk. 

"Perhaps," Avon said in a mild, wondering voice, "but I choose not to. After all, you are still worth something."

"Avon!" Tarrant gasped. _No, not that. Don't turn me in._ He couldn't talk anymore, but was still wretchedly conscious and aware as Avon tucked furs around his body, and moved him closer to the fire. He understood why, too late to do anything about it. They'd hidden Orac, back near the beginning of their trek. The Federation would pay handsomely for him alive, to tell them where Orac was. Only they didn't know Avon. He'd have the computer moved long before Tarrant recovered enough from the drug to tell them anything. And while Tarrant was screaming his guts out, trying to convince them, Avon would be chuckling at their stupidity. _If there's anyone up there, please let me die now. Not wait for it, helpless, like a fish in a barrel._ Tarrant passed out before his hypothetical higher being could reply.

***

"What?" Tarrant woke up. He was sitting bolt upright, heart racing, jolted out of a terrible nightmare. Avon had left him in the snow for the Federation. Wait. That wasn't a dream. It had happened, hadn't it? 

He looked around. This wasn't even a holding cell, far less an interrogation chamber. In fact, it looked remarkably like officer's quarters aboard a Federation Pursuit Ship. He got out of bed, wobbling slightly as his knees seemed to have forgotten how to lock. Except for a peculiar taste in his mouth, and a general sense of disorientation, he was feeling fine. Feeling fine? Surprised, he looked down his nude length. There was a large, pinkish patch of rather tender skin covering his side, and a patchwork of small scars along his arms following the veins. He wondered at the length of time that implied. _I could have been healed and interrogated and mind-wiped, for all I know. But it doesn't seem likely. If anyone went to that much trouble, why not go a bit further, and have me wake up a loyal Federation officer again?_

He found a Federation uniform folded neatly on a shelf nearby. It looked a reasonable fit, and he didn't really fancy chasing around the ship in the altogether. He shrugged and put it on. He was developing a sneaking suspicion that maybe he wasn't in immediate danger. There were boots at the foot of the bed, also in his size. The only omission in proper Federation attire was the regulation handgun.

He made his way to the flight deck, tensely expecting a shot in the back, or a least a shout of discovery, but the ship appeared deserted. It was a factory clean vessel, with finely-tuned engines- judging by the faint vibrational sense his bones had learned in Space Academy. _Nice ship,_ he thought, _just the sort I'd steal if I had that chance._

As he was still a bit unsteady on his feet, he had an opportunity to think things over on the way and was able to come to the only conclusion that made sense of his survival. "You could have said what you were planning," he protested mildly as he entered the flight deck. "How did you do it?"

Avon looked up. He'd shaved and changed into a black uniform, but his arrogant expression showed he'd not changed his nature. "I told you I would need a pilot."

"Yes, you did at that." Tarrant came down further and noted the black circles beneath Avon's eyes and the way his hands trembled on the controls. He flopped down into the navigator's seat beside Avon, his legs not quite up to a graceful descent. He checked over the instrumentation. They were three days out from Gauda Prime, and there were no other ships registering on the sensors. Their flight path had been erratic, to say the least."You really aren't good enough to fly this by yourself. Why didn't you have Orac take over..." At Avon's narrow-eyed glare, Tarrant paused. He looked around the flight deck, and failed to discover a blinking, obnoxious box. "You didn't."

"Under the circumstances, Orac's usefulness was limited," Avon muttered. 

"But won't the Federation use it against us?" 

"I doubt it. The person I sold Orac to has far more personal uses for it."

"Servalan!" Tarrant was aghast.

"No." Avon smiled. "Her second-in-command." 

Orac had told them when Servalan arrived on the planet and took over the chase after them. She wanted Orac, and she wanted Avon; Tarrant still hadn't figured out which was the higher priority. "I don't see as that's much better."

"Ah, but the first thing Orac told him was how Servalan had his father murdered. The next thing was how quickly he could advance in the ranks by turning in our dear Commissioner Sleer."

"I smell one very dead second-in-command. You might just as well have handed Orac directly to her."

"Actually, you smell one very dead Servalan. It seems a favor-currying local politician sent her a bouquet of Talosian posies. Very rare, very beautiful. What a pity she was fatally allergic to them."

Tarrant's eyes widened. "I don't believe it." Servalan had been the most vital and alive woman he'd ever met. True she had the morals of an alley cat, and the blood-thirst of a vampire bat, but it was still hard to imagine that smooth, soft body as a stiffened corpse.

Avon crooked a grin. "Neither did she. Still, she did die of a severe allergic reaction, and the flowers were there on her desk. The currently highest Federation official on the planet is confident that it was a tragic accident."

"Her second-in-command, naturally. But if you're expecting gratitude to keep him from turning us in..."

"I would be a fool. No, actually, I am expecting greed to ensure his silence. Orac will cease functioning the moment my death or capture is reported. A contingency program." 

"And what about us, your old crew?" Tarrant snapped. " We might have needed Orac." 

"In my absence that would be extremely likely." Avon glanced sideways at Tarrant's scowl. "If it makes you feel any better I instituted the program just before we abandoned Xenon base. The situation... well, to put it bluntly I saw only two possibilities. Either we found... allies (even now Tarrant noted, Avon shied away from Blake's name) or we were dead."

Tarrant considered. It was true, nothing had gone right in a long time. _Scorpio_ had been the universe's fastest pile of junk and they had Orac and the teleport, but somehow they just couldn't seem to win even one battle. They were all tired and desperate, and they didn't even like each other, but they still clung together. Sometimes he thought Dorian's cave had succeeded in molding them into one creature, but it was an unsuccessful abortion of a monster. "All right. It's done anyway. What are we going to do now?"

"I haven't the faintest idea."

"What!"

"I am tired." Avon rubbed his face. "I am tired of running and fighting, and running again. I am tired of losing. I am tired of feeling my mind fraying. I do not think I am quite mad, but I am hardly an objective observer." He stared straight ahead at the star pattern on the main screen. "What is your considered opinion?"

"I think you're right. You're tired. Go to bed, Avon."

Avon continued to stare blankly ahead. "I don't sleep."

"Then take a sedative. We are alive, dammit, and I'm going to keep us that way. That is what you intended when you traded Orac for me and this ship, isn't it?"

"I can't remember that far back." Avon rose to his feet, stumbling slightly, and turned toward the exit, then paused and turned back to Tarrant. "By the way, the communicator link to Orac is still active. I've boosted it through the ship." He pulled out the communicator he used to contact Orac, and placed it on the navigation console. 

"Won't his new owner mind if we borrow Orac?"

"He'll never know. It's a sub-etheric transmitter. Nothing audible at his end." Abruptly, Avon grinned brightly. "I don't easily surrender the things that are mine."

Tarrant watched as Avon made his slow way off the deck. "No, I don't guess you do. Not even when it's a beaten-up pilot." He eyed Orac's communicator thoughtfully. "It couldn't hurt." He activated the communicator. "Orac, this is Tarrant. Can you tell me what happened to the others?"

_Really! I have already told Avon that there is no data in any Federation information bank concerning the disposition of the members of Scorpio's crew. Must I constantly repeat myself? Do humans never learn?_

"Apparently not, Orac." Tarrant shut down the communicator. "Avon, you old fraud. You do care."

**Author's Note:**

> In memory of Tarrant the Goldfish, who was a valiant soul. Really- he got sick, and I put him in a small hospital tank next to the main tank which contained Blake, Vila and Avon. Avon and Tarrant stayed looking at each other through the glass until Tarrant passed away days later despite all the fish medicine I tried. Avon didn't live much longer. Apparently even goldfish have soulmates.
> 
> "All that is gold does not glitter,  
> Not all those who wander are lost;  
> The old that is strong does not wither  
> Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
> 
> from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien


End file.
